Siler listed 110 reasons to oppose the BIP-110 proposal

The debate within Bitcoin over how to curb online spam and non-monetary data has intensified after Michael Siler issued a detailed criticism of BIP-110.

In a lengthy article posted on X.com on Sunday, Siler argued that a temporary fork proposal aimed at restricting certain types of data on the Bitcoin network was the wrong choice-although he acknowledged that the core concerns raised by supporters were legitimate. The proposal, called Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110), was proposed in December 2025 and has become one of the most prominent protocol-level disputes in the Bitcoin development community since the 2015 - 2017 "Block Size War". At the time, issues of scalability sparked fierce disagreements, with the focus of debate on whether change should risk chain splitting. Siler's intervention comes as Ordinary activity cools from its 2023 peak, raising questions about the urgency of such agreement changes.

Core Points

Thaler supports the goals behind BIP-110-such as protecting verification capabilities and affordable payments-but he rejects the proposal as a mechanism for a solution. BIP-110 can only advance if it receives 55% verification node signal support during the Bitcoin "block cycle", and the recent level of support has been low. The number of Ordinals inscriptions has dropped significantly from its August 2023 high, which may reduce the urgent pressure to push for treaty-level repairs. The debate reflects past governance tensions, including "block-sized wars," when differences over enforcement and network rules repeatedly threatened to divide ecosystems.

Siler's criticism: Same goal, different plan

According to Siler's X.com post, his arguments are aimed at the proposal itself, not the people who support it. He said many members of the Bitcoin community he respects support BIP-110 for reasons including: keeping authentication features accessible, protecting node operators from unnecessary costs, maintaining low-cost payments, and preventing Bitcoin from evolving into a universal data store. Siler emphasized that he agreed with the goals but disagreed with the solutions proposed. In the same post, he positioned his position as calling for the maintenance of "neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets and permissionless innovation," while emphasizing that fierce differences should not turn into individual factional battles. As of 12 noon EDT on Sunday, Siler's post had 879,000 views, 692 replies and 852 retweets, underscoring the speed at which the discussion has spread beyond the core developer circle.

What will BIP-110 change-and why approval is so difficult

Protocol changes like BIP-110 are not automatically activated; they rely on broad consensus among verifiers. BIP-110 cannot be implemented unless 55% of verification block node signals support the proposal within a Bitcoin "block cycle". According to the latest cycle data cited in the report, Cycle 475-covering blocks 955,584 to 957,599-showed that only about 1% of the blocks expressed support. This number suggests that even if the proposal is technically open for discussion, it currently lacks the signaling momentum needed to activate it. This approval threshold is critical for investors and operators because it determines whether the change is likely to take effect in practice or simply as a controversial idea within the development community. Proposals that fail to meet the required level of support may still influence future policy debates, but are unlikely to have immediate network-level effects.

The controversy over rampant spam meets cooling Ordinals market

The BIP-110 controversy is related to concerns about "non-monetary transactions" and data patterns that supporters describe as spam. BIP-110 was proposed to limit Ordinals-style inscriptions and other arbitrary data that proponents believe could overload the network and decentralize Bitcoin's primary function as peer-to-peer cash. However, when on-chain activities change, the political and technical urgency of such proposals is more difficult to measure. The controversy comes at a time when Ordinary activity is reported to be near an all-time low. According to Dune Analytics data cited in source materials, less than 10,000 Ordinals have been engraved on the Bitcoin blockchain every day in the past month-well below the peak of more than 400,000 per day in August 2023. A lower number of inscriptions could change the risk assessments of both sides of the debate. Those who support protocol restrictions may argue that even reduced activity could still set harmful precedents for how data is used along the chain. Opponents may retort that if demand and congestion pressures have eased, bifurcations-especially ones that introduce restrictions-will be more difficult to justify without broader consensus.

Supporters, critics, and remnants of the early Bitcoin governance struggle

According to sources, BIP-110 was proposed by pseudonym developer "Dathon Ohm" and its supporters include Ocean protocol founder Luke Dashjr. On the opposition side, Blockstream CEO Adam Back was quoted as an outspoken critic of BIP-110. Back previously described the proposal as an attempt to "control others" and argued that Bitcoin's decentralized nature should prevent any faction from imposing its preferred rules on the broader community. This opposition is not only technical, but also ideological-rooted in cypherpunk's principles of permissionless, censory-resistant currencies. At the same time, supporters of BIP-110 believe that ordinals-driven inflation is a serious threat that requires action. They also insisted that BIP-110 would not cause chain splits, a concern raised by those worried about temporary restrictions. Proponents further argue that the fork is designed to be limited-described as a one-year limit-and therefore does not invalidate paid transactions for the long term. These arguments have led to comparisons with the "block-size wars" between 2015 and 2017. At the time, disagreements over how to expand Bitcoin and whether controversial changes should be risked evolved into a broader debate about enforcement and legitimacy. In both cases, the fundamental question is the same: Under decentralized governance, how should networks evolve under pressure? In the current cycle, the data points used by both parties are not symmetrical. Siler did not deny that there was an inflation problem; he questioned whether the governance approach-introducing temporary restrictions through a fork-like mechanism-was compatible with Bitcoin's broader neutrality and hard consensus commitments. At the same time, the recent downturn in Ordinary activity has weakened a common reason for immediate intervention: that the Internet is under severe stress from inscriptions. As the debate continues, readers should pay close attention to two points: whether BIP-110 's support signal will rise to the 55% activation threshold in subsequent block cycles, and whether Ordinary activity will pick up significantly or remain sluggish. These developments will likely determine whether the proposal remains a theoretical tipping point or becomes a real test of how Bitcoin manages data usage and conflicts of network rules.